GPH Ispat shares soar on news of factory launch

GPH Ispat will kick off production at full capacity at its new factory set up in Sitakunda upazila of Chattogram in December this year; this revelation pushed up the share prices of the company on Sunday.

Now the management of the company wants to continue to produce trial products and sell them on the market from September 7, 2020.

After this information was revealed, GPH's share price rose by 9.76 percent on the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

At the end of the trading session on Sunday, the closing price of each share stood at Tk27.

When contacted Kamrul Islam, executive director (Finance and Business Development) GPH Ispat, told The Business Standard, "According to the plant supplier schedule, the expected Hot Commissioning supposed to be completed by June 30, 2020."

"However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all foreign experts involved in the Plant Commissioning had left the project site for their own countries without completing Hot Commissioning," he added.

He said there were 41 foreign experts–from: Austria, Germany, Italy, and Russia–working for the project before the novel coronavirus outbreak.

"We have contacted them, and by using online platforms, they are helping us for Hot commissioning since June 20,2020. Now we are able to produce marketable products. We are able to use 50-60 percent capacity of our plant. We hope we will be able to run the factory at full capacity from December 2020," he continued.  

He further said, during the Hot Commissioning, production of marketable products had started which was not officially the commercial production of the company.

The new plant was built using quantum technology–the first in Asia and the second in the world–at a cost of Tk2,500 crore.

When it goes into full production, the company would triple its market share in steel and increase its production fivefold.

The annual production capacity of the expanded plant is 840,000 tonnes of billets and 640,000 tonnes of rods and medium section products–steel BIM, angle, channel, flat bar, etc.–which is the additional production capacity of the company. 

After starting the full commercial production of the plant, the annual production capacity of the company will become 1,008,000 tonnes of billets and 760,000 tonnes of rod and medium section products.

The mass production is expected to increase GPH's annual turnover to Tk5,000 crore from the existing Tk1,300 crore within three years of production.

The production of the plant will take the market share of GPH in the steel industry to around 10% from the existing 3-4%.

Currently, the BSRM is the leading steel manufacturer of the country with a market share of above 10%.

The sales and net profits of the company were Tk784 crore and Tk37 crore respectively in the first three quarters of the last financial year, according to the Dhaka Stock Exchange.